#2 4K on way!
After having my 4K for a month, we are now getting a Samsung 48" HU8500W for my wife.
I have been progressively moving mine further away from me as the artefacts from the font-scaling technology were noticeable. The distance is now 75cm face-to-screen, which is about right, though 80cm might be perfect for a 55".
48" would be about the perfect size for monitor/TV convergence, if you are not going to watch TV from a large distance away. To have the same size pixel pitch as on the 30", a 4K would have to be 45", so the 48"'s pixel pitch is only 6% larger.
Small 4K displays
Given that Cubase, along with many other desktop programs) relies on high UI information density, and will likely be that, notwithstanding touch-enabling (still lots of non-touch info to look at) for a while, anything much smaller than 48" is going to cramp the visuals.
Smaller size 4Ks will tend to favour visual editing, but there is still the issue with non-scaling text being too small. Having never run displays at anything other than their native resolution (mainly because non-scaling text looked terrible), I have never examined the effect of scaling everything up had on the look of pictures in dialog boxes and non-auto-scaling programs). Any comments?
Just for Windows users, there is the capacity to change the sizes of individual UI elements, like window captions bars, menu text et al, rather than just proportionally scaling everything up.
Glasses
As for glasses, the less range in focal lengths, the better. I find my dual range ones OK, so I can still look down at my desk to read, but the triple range ones require head movement, and not just eyes, to read the full height. Compared to scrolling pages on a smaller screen, it is not a big deal.
I originally got the triple range because I got fed up with having to take them off just so I could clearly see people who came to my desk to talk, but since I am in my home-office basically full time now, the duals are in use full time.
30Hz usage
While for me, 30Hz is only temporary until HDMI 2.0 video cards are out, I have not found 30Hz tiring, and I am using the 4K as the main monitor (at 55", could it be anything but that?) for 8 to 12 hours a day, and a TV for some hours more.
I have not used it with Cubase for any real work yet, but it is fantastic for everything else. It is nice to have enough room to have space for programs like MYOB to take up half the screen, and still have room to have online banking open for reconciliation.
Compact computing = BRIX
Given the satisfaction with 30Hz, and since we needed to get another video card for the 48", plus my wife’s computer was basically a huge box filled with air and far more computing power than was required, we decided instead to replace it with a Gigabyte BRIX GV-BXi3H-4010, which has 4K@30Hz built in. Basically, a video card would have set us back AU$160, whereas the BRIX+4GB RAM was AU$425, so it was a no brainer.
It is so tiny (114x108x43mm/4.5x4.3x1.7"), mainly because it is limited in what can be modified, namely only RAM (up to 2x8GB) and mSATA and SATA III drives, much like a laptop! And it turns on and off so fast (no POST screens). Unfortunately, such miniaturisation is not plausible for my computing requirements.
I know it is another one of my long rants, but I hope it gives some help, and some considerations to think about, for those who might be considering taking on 4K.